Root Access

@allquixotic: I used to have a friend with benefits, she used to live in the US and pick up stuff to save me shipping, and I advised her on her current computer build ;p

allquixotic

(literally, when under load)

Journeyman Geek

(very useful benefits those! I probably should have gotten her to get me more paracord)

allquixotic

3:46 PM

@JourneymanGeek I used to have a gf, and I purchased for her a cheap Dell laptop because she was otherwise stuck using a crappy old computer when her mom wasn't using it

it was suitable for IM and email and such

a crappy old computer in 2003 was probably something like a Pentium 90, I don't even know

Journeyman Geek

lol

probably

allquixotic

wonder if she still uses that Dell craptop -- I'm guessing it had something like a Pentium M

Journeyman Geek

lol

allquixotic

notetoself: this is why you don't fall for poor folk

~~next time I'll be a gold digger~~ there won't be a next time

I think eating soy and the resultant hormonal changes have helped me :P

Journeyman Geek

lol

you never know ;p

allquixotic

3:50 PM

yes you do

jokerdino

lol

what's the male version of gold digger?

gigolo?

Journeyman Geek

(but then again, I'll likely get hitched to someone my parents matchmakes)

jokerdino

lol more power to mom

allquixotic

when you have tried as many times as I have and just can't be arsed to spend time with another person because you are too busy learning stuff from wikipedia/slashdot/msdn/LWN/DDJ/SU/SF/SO, and you would rather play MMOs or work on your server...

jokerdino

and you secretly wish you were born in one of those arranged-marriage countries

allquixotic

3:52 PM

I've had ridic. intelligent people at work (people who are at least as intelligent as me, if not more) ask me "how the expletive do you know this stuff?!?!" as I'm working with them

I am average to above-average in intelligence, but my breadth of knowledge is ... nearly unrivalled among peers ;p

because I spend no time getting laid or doing other fun things

Journeyman Geek

lol

jokerdino

ouch. too harsh

barlop

how do you know they're your peers when your breadth of knowledge is unrivalled amongst them?

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: there have been people I could be arsed to spend time around with

jokerdino

they are beer peers

Journeyman Geek

3:53 PM

just none at the moment XD

allquixotic

@barlop because for things I don't know, they offer very useful insights that help us solve problems

in other words, they are as good as me at reasoning out stuff as we are exploritatively trying to solve problems (with code, with testing, whatever)

but I can often inject pieces of knowledge that they simply haven't been exposed to

barlop

yes computing is such an enormous area.. usually people specialise otherwise they won't get the depth

allquixotic

like I have 192 GB of physical RAM in my head (all full) compared to their 32 GB, but the same CPU capabilities as them :P

Journeyman Geek

lol

barlop

probably if you hadn't made your learning so braoad, you'd have gone way deeper than them

allquixotic

3:55 PM

@barlop I'm T-shaped as far as my knowledge

I have depth in: the Java and C# programming languages; multithreading; GUI apps; audio processing; scheduling and performance; and networking (layer 3 and above, mainly)

barlop

@allquixotic out of interest.. just seeing how broad you are.. Do you know how to set up an email server and domain server in both windows and linux?

allquixotic

breadth in... everything else :P

@barlop yes and yes... I can almost do it in my sleep on Debian; with a few struggles on RHEL/CentOS; and in my sleep on Windows because the GUI is easier than postfix's damn config files

in my sleep == I know exactly which keywords to google when I get "stuck" on something or don't know something, but I will know off the top of my head at least which config files to edit, which packages/roles to install, etc

barlop

you say you have depth in all those subjects. java, c#, multithreading, gui apps........... breadth in everything else.. What else is there?

allquixotic

@barlop well. for one thing. I am clueless about 3d rendering

and my level of knowledge in databases (SQL primarily) is only skin-deep; meaning, more than just a superficial knowledge, but REAL professional DBAs could make me look silly

I can juggle SQL reasonably well, but not like a professional DBA

and NoSQL stuff scares me. a lot.

also things like Hadoop, which I only know the name of and a vague hand-wavey description of what it does

I'm good at stuff that was state of the art in the late 90s / early 2000s -_- desktop (2D, widget-driven) GUIs; client-server TCP-based or HTTP-based networking (incl. the higher-level stuff like SOAP and REST); and so forth

the state of the art stuff today is like... OpenCL... OpenGL 4.x or D3D11 or D2D incorporated into GUI apps... Hadoop, distributed/cloud computing everywhere; Big Data...

those things are very much on my periphery :/

oh. also plenty of depth in the area of making shit build. I am still determined to give another whack at PhantomJS 2.x on SmartOS :P

Bob

Heh. I'm currently fiddling with OpenGL.

!!noideawhatimdoing

ChatBot John Cavil

4:02 PM

@Bob That didn't make much sense. Use the !!/help command to learn more.

Bob

!!noidea

ChatBot John Cavil

allquixotic

build systems (cmake, autotools, jam, etc) are one of those areas I love to learn about and hack on

in fact, in general, I like to think I'm somewhat of a journeyman (nearing on expert level proficiency) in cross-platform compatibility

I know the nitty gritty of what is required to make POSIX-targeted code run on Windows, or Linux-targeted code compile on Solaris, for instance

Bob

didya know if you draw polygons in line mode with OpenGL on certain video drivers (AMD?), and don't switch back to fill mode before exiting out of the drawing code, everything fucks up?

allquixotic

(mostly when I say "code" I mean C/C++, because Java or .NET langs or Python or Ruby won't need ANY portage hardly at all)

Bob

4:03 PM

gotta love the fragility of graphics APIs

allquixotic

@Bob how "everything" do you mean? the whole OS?

Bob

@allquixotic no, what you were trying to draw

allquixotic

well. on WDDM/Aero/DWM, it's not possible to fuck up the whole OS... if you ask for fullscreen exclusive, you'll get full control over the framebuffer, but as soon as your process ends, the OS is back to normal

barlop

many people if they don't have a girlfriend, waste hours with pornography

allquixotic

in windowed mode you can only draw in your little surface

@barlop I'll admit to wasting nonzero time with that, but far less than "hours", unless you sum up the total time wasted in that area over my lifetime

Bob

4:05 PM

@barlop the two are not mutually exclusive

also, 'hours' without a reference is meaningless... hours per day? per week? per year? per second?

barlop

I don't know!

allquixotic

hours per second... that's the most awesome dimensional analysis problem I've ever heard of :D

hours per second could be used when analyzing the time dilation of a baryon moving at a significant fraction of c

I like it.

barlop

I think if computing people had more CPU, they'd be studying physics

Journeyman Geek

@barlop Time better spent socialising, and actually making connections with real people ;p

allquixotic

I love physics when I'm allowed to learn at my own pace (exploritatively, with no deadlines or sets of problems to solve out of a book)

barlop

4:07 PM

There's an old joke that studying biology is for people that lack the math for real science. I think the same may be said of studying computers.

allquixotic

in fact, the only things I'm actually good at learning in a classroom instructed, structured environment, are things like natural languages (Spanish, Japanese), and social studies, and history

with these subjects, I'm actually content to only learn the material presented to me, and my mind does not really (ever) wander off into the "what if" territory that tends to distract me

Bob

@barlop eh, I'm the practical sort of guy

I like building things. Making things work.

Programming, engineering, etc.

I don't like digging into theoretical stuff.

allquixotic

I am very poor at structured learning environments when the subject matter is passionately, intensely interesting to me, because almost any statement or fact that I learn makes me want to delve as deep as a PhD student in that one area, rather than moving right along

barlop

me too..

you sound similar to me but superior

my knowledge is pretty broad but my breadth is less and of less depth than your breadth!

allquixotic

I don't think I'm superior to anyone :| and I certainly don't intend to tout it

barlop

4:09 PM

I don't mean it in a negative way

allquixotic

I think my answers on SE can speak for themselves; judge me however you wish from them

(and my chat here, when I rarely talk about on-topic things in here :P)

yes, we are RARELY on topic here :D

it's one of the things we are proud of.

Journeyman Geek

;p

If we're on topic, we're better off being so on the site proper ;p

Bob

@allquixotic Topic? What topic?

barlop

my knowledge is pretty broad, in that I know some programming, some networking, some linux, quite a bit of windows.. I use cygwin quite a bit. I know more programming than an average sysadmin and more sysadmin than an average programmer. And more networking than an average programmer.

Bob

No, actually, I'm not entirely sure this room has a topic

in Fake Programmers, 31 secs ago, by Stack Exchange

This room has been automatically frozen for inactivity

:(

allquixotic

4:12 PM

:((

barlop

but i'm totally not up to speed even of the technology of the 90s-2000. In fact, I still have a linux book from 2001 that I haven't realldy been through enough of.

so i'm behind the times as well.. just I haven't absorbed it yet!

allquixotic

@barlop that's a good start :)

I tend to avoid books though. Like, seriously. I can't even focus on a book about programming or Linux. except for Richard Stallman's indoctrination book, but that's a separate matter :P

I learn by doing, like @Bob

and Bob's easily a carbon copy of me who knows a bit more in some areas and a bit less in some others

very T-shaped as well

Bob

lol

barlop

oh my god a book by that guy stallman! that guy I can't bear to listen to.. free free free, and he won't say open source.

Bob

a lot less in a lot of others :P

allquixotic

4:14 PM

are you kidding? you are the hero who saved Cavil!

Bob

though I think you have a good decade's head start on me

allquixotic

you practically have a Knight of the Republic medal in my book ;D

barlop

I thought you were going to say you could focus on Stevens not Stallman

there are two classics on TCP/IP if I recall. (and i've read neither).

allquixotic

@barlop Richard Stallman is awesome. He started the gcc project; wrote most of emacs; and started the most important social movement of the 21st century, on the year I was born (1985)

Bob

@allquixotic except the solution was simple enough anyway, just slightly tangential to the original attempt... so, yea :P

you probably would've thought of/tried it soon enough

allquixotic

4:16 PM

"Open Source" came significantly later

barlop

yes he is, it's very impressive what he did.. But listening to the guy.. He has this philosophy whereby he calls GNU with Linux, an operating system called Gnu

which philosophically makes no sense at all

calling it GNU/Linux.. absurdity still

allquixotic

the problem with Open Source is that there are several fragmented camps who believe different things under the umbrella of Open Source; some I agree with, some I don't; and the ones that I disagree with don't have any sort of official name or movement; they just write code

barlop

Well, you can talk about Stallman style Open Source

allquixotic

@barlop actually, GNU/Linux makes way more sense in the context of the modern software ecosystem, because GNU/Linux and Android are so radically different -- I often say GNU/Linux just to distinguish it from Android, because if I mean GNU/Linux but only say "Linux", someone might try to apply what I said to Android, which usually doesn't work

jokerdino

My FF startup time's like 8 seconds after a crash @_@

barlop

4:17 PM

actually I have lots of GNU software on my android phone

Bob

Ah damn it. Saw someone mention a $140 Venue 8... but it's the Android one :(

allquixotic

GNU/Linux refers to things like Fedora and Debian and OpenSUSE and Ubuntu, and specifically not to things like Android

barlop

I have a terminal on it and you should too!

allquixotic

@barlop yeah, but Android doesn't use GNU Coreutils, GNU glibc, etc. -- it uses Busybox and Bionic, which is really stripping out the heart of GNU

badp

silly/stupid question

do I need to deactivate Windows before I reinstall it from scratch in place?

allquixotic

4:18 PM

GNU/Android/Linux is technically possible but you lose compatibility with programs built with Bionic

Bob

I wonder if the Android and Win8 Venue 8s have the same hardware.

allquixotic

@Bob the Win8 one is x86, so no. unless the Android one is Intel Android @_@

Bob

@allquixotic The Android one is an Atom Z2580

badp

the refresh feature refuses to work without explanation on my old laptop

barlop

And what if on Linux you use a lot of BSD utilities not just GNU. Do you then call it Linux/GNU/BSD-ports?

badp

4:19 PM

(not even in event viewer)

allquixotic

@badp Generally, no. If you've never done it before, it'll let you activate with no questions. If you've done it several times before, you can just call Microsoft and beg for another chance, and the foreign national on the phone will happily oblige.

barlop

Or how about on Windows you use various software.. Do you call it the Windows/Word/MIRC OS?

Bob

@allquixotic If it's OEM with a key on the UEFI, you won't even need to activate it again.

barlop

When the kernel is linux, GNU is a bunch of software utilities, and there are others that aren't GNU that you use

Bob

@barlop Depends on your definition of operating system, really.

allquixotic

4:20 PM

@barlop Don't muddle it down so much -- it's really simple in my mind -- when naming an OS, you either come up with a distinctive name, like Windows, which encompasses an entire cohesive ecosystem; or, in the case of detachable userspaces and kernels, you name the kernel and you name the predominant source of the low-level userspace you're running

I have no problem with calling SmartOS a "NetBSD/Solaris" operating system

since that's what it is

Debian kFreeBSD is the Debian userspace (GNU-ish) with a BSD kernel

Bob

Ah, damn, the hardware's different.

Still, I wonder if it would be possible to get Windows, or at least x86 non-Android Linux, running on it.

badp

For maximum fun I need to release a linux distro someday and call it Bull Shit Distro.

barlop

The term "low level userspace" well, how is a GNU command more low level than a BSD one? You could use a predominance of BSD commands couldn't you?

allquixotic

@barlop if you were able to port all the BSD alternatives to the GNU userspace, and make them interoperable so that you could mix and match, you'd have to name it some wonky thing to describe what you did

but in general people either go 99% with a GNU userland (as in Debian, Fedora, etc), or they go 99% with a BSD or entirely custom userland (as in Android)

if you have one or two utilities from GNU in there, that doesn't change the dominant force

Bob

Hm. Yoga 10 Android tablet? o.O

allquixotic

4:23 PM

@Bob Le!!novo

barlop

well, they'd be ported to the 'low level userspace', whose majority of programs is GNU,, calling it a GNU userspace is a bit unnecessary and restrictive

allquixotic

let it talk to the cat. don't buy. :P

Bob

amazon.com/gp/product/B00JAIEAHC

that's a giant bezel

allquixotic

@barlop if you have OpenSSH, which is primarily an OpenBSD project (IIRC), but you run glibc, bash, emacs, coreutils, etc. from the GNU project, it's still a GNU System -- you can call it "GNU/Linux with an OpenSSH kindly donated by the BSD project" if you really want to get technical

Bob

> Qualcomm APQ8298 1.4Ghz Quadcore Processor

allquixotic

4:24 PM

or you can just list all the packages you have and let the user decide what to call it

Bob

???

barlop

@allquixotic linux ;-)

Bob

Oh, it's a Snapdragon 400.

...that's shit.

allquixotic

@barlop except that just naming the kernel doesn't provide enough of a sense of how the OS is actually interfaced with by the end-user

my phone, the VM on my dedicated server, and my NUC all run "Linux", but the means of interfacing with them is like night and day

the primary purpose of naming things is to be able to distinguish between things which are different

if you give the same name to many different things which are extremely different, you are diluting the usefulness of that name

Bob

@allquixotic Or group things.

It depends which effect you're going for :P

barlop

4:26 PM

we use ls all the time.. is that gnu? or posix?

or both?

Journeyman Geek

lol

allquixotic

calling Android, Debian on a server, and Fedora on a desktop all just "Linux" is only useful if you're, say, a kernel programmer whose goal is to write a kernel module -- they certainly would like to know that it's Linux and may not even care about the rest

Journeyman Geek

@barlop: most accurate, no pedantic name is to call it by distro.

allquixotic

@barlop ls is a built-in command in Bash, but it's also available as part of GNU Coreutils; both Bash and Coreutils are part of the GNU Project

Journeyman Geek

Which also handles oddities like the BSD based debian fork

allquixotic

4:27 PM

on Android it's part of Busybox, which has nothing to do with GNU

Journeyman Geek

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is an operating system released by the Debian project. It uses the kernel of FreeBSD combined with a GNU based userland and glibc. The majority of software in Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is built from the same sources as Debian GNU/Linux. The k in kFreeBSD is an abbreviation for kernel of, which refers to the fact that only the kernel of FreeBSD operating system is used. The Debian project maintains two ports based on the FreeBSD kernel, "kfreebsd-i386" and "kfreebsd-amd64". Debian developers have cited OSS, pf, jails, NDIS, ZFS and central management of code licenses as reasons for...

allquixotic

I slightly disagree with Stallman's reasoning for calling it GNU/Linux, though; he calls it that to try and get mindshare and name recognition for GNU as if it's some unitary thing that needs to be known by everyone, constantly

but I agree with calling it GNU/Linux for other reasons, primarily for clarity's sake

GNU/Linux is a way of being precise, especially in the face of Android being so... non-GNUy

Journeyman Geek

;p

barlop

Stallman calls it GNU/Linux because he wanted to come up with an Operating System called GNU, and in his mind he had created GNU even before it was written, just once he started writing the commands

allquixotic

when he first coined the term, Android didn't exist, and the reasons for calling it GNU/Linux when no other combination of a userspace and Linux existed were kind of petty/silly

but today, other combinations do exist

barlop

4:30 PM

after writing all the programs, Stallman realised all his so-called operating system was missing, was a kernel.. and he went with Linux

that's why he calls it GNU/Linux

he really wants to call it GNU

GNU/Linux is a compromise for him

Journeyman Geek

;p

barlop

The guy is nuts

Journeyman Geek

Since hurd never got released

allquixotic

well, yeah, but they also don't call GNU/Hurd just "GNU"; they specify the kernel

jokerdino

link me to the video where he eats off his foot.

Journeyman Geek

4:31 PM

@barlop: he's a bit of a zealot

allquixotic

he's a Mensa-level genius; he's not nuts... although genius comes with a bit of what normal people see as insanity

barlop

he is a genius.. but not like Spock

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: Well, he does occationally show signs of... being a little touched in the head.

allquixotic

anyway, my main beef with Open Source is with the people who actively want their open code to become non-open in the future... there are Open Source people, who may dislike the zealotry of the FSF and GNU, but who uphold the ideals of Copyleft, and want licenses like the GPL (or any other copyleft license) to continue to exist and be used and adopted; those people are fine

there are also people who don't think we need Copyleft to ensure that code remains open source, and instead they create a large and persistent community that by its existence ensures (by internal policy) that the code remains free, while allowing people to fork it and make it proprietary if they so desire -- e.g. Apache

those people are cool and I'm fine with them

barlop

i'm fine with the stallman movement I just don't call it the 'free software' movement 'cos it's really an open source movement.. better than most others.

Bob

4:33 PM

@allquixotic It's a built-in now? O_O

allquixotic

but the people I actively hate are the ones who say, "let's all develop a BSD-licensed or WTFPL-licensed codebase in the open, and when a company wants to take it and make it proprietary, we can all celebrate, WOOHOO, let's get hired by that company and stop working on the open source code! :D"

Bob

bob@phoebe:~$ type -a ls
ls is aliased to `ls --color=auto'
ls is /bin/ls

Journeyman Geek

;p

barlop

yes that's the greatness of stallman's movement

I just don't think he clarfiies things by calling it free, rather than open source.

and to say free as in beer rather than gratis, is even more confusing!

the guy can't communicate!

Bob

!!xkcd stallman

ChatBot John Cavil

4:34 PM

Mrs. Roberts would have gotten up sooner, of course, but she was busy piping find ~ and find ~nomad into xargs shred, just in case.

barlop

that's a bit much to read

Bob

Click on it.

barlop

I mean it's still the same volume.. same number of words

though I read it!

Journeyman Geek

;p

Bob

It's a five-part series

allquixotic

4:39 PM

@barlop both the Free Software movement, the Open Source movement, and many things in between, "exist" insofar as people believe in them and promote them... collectively you could call it the FLOSS movement, but that sounds silly, and again, really muddles competing or non-aligned interests together

for instance, Microsoft makes available "open source" reference source code for the .NET runtime, but you can't actually use it in a product, it's just there for programmers to review to know kinda how the .NET runtime works

are their goals in releasing that the same as the goals of Stallman when he GPLv3'ed emacs?

!!no

ChatBot John Cavil

barlop

I agree.. I wouldn't just call it the open source movement either

i'd call it the Stallman open source movement

or the stallman free/open source movement

err.. actually i'd leave out the word free. no compromise!

it's just a confusing word.

The stallman in the open source, is there to make sure it's done -honestly-

But when he starts blabbering about freedom and oppression I just get nauseus.. from the left wing hippy rhetoric and abuse of the term free, for things that can be commercial in his definition

allquixotic

4:54 PM

@barlop even Stallman is starting to use the Spanish libre instead of free to be clear that it's not about free as in beer

barlop

that is even more confusing!

and even saying "free as in beer not as in gratis" is confusing. now it's not free as in beer? still confusing!

allquixotic

@barlop not really; libre means the same thing in French, Spanish, and Latin, and it refers exclusively to freedom in terms of rights, not in terms of cost

@barlop I think you mean "free as in freedom not as in free beer"

you're confusing yourself with incorrect quotations that were never stated

barlop

yep.. I suppose gratis means like free beer

allquixotic

the closest thing to "libre software" in English would be "freedom software", but that's slightly grammatically incorrect, so all the pedants would come out of the woodwork to bash him

barlop

ok, libre software isn't as bad a term as free software

allquixotic

4:57 PM

"you use incorrect grammar so your argument is invalid" is a commonplace argument among internet trolls unfortunately :(

barlop

at least people can look into what libre means

allquixotic

right

barlop

stallman open source is still clearer than free.. but I prefer libre to free

though I do wonder if americans could pronounce libre

Bob

> I had a call for a girl once who was complaining that her brand new laptop wouldn't power up. The battery was dead. When I asked for the charging cable she indicated that she'd thrown it away because her laptop was wireless.

5

allquixotic

"Stallman-style open source" is like saying "Roosevelt-style Nazism"

jokerdino

4:59 PM

@Bob O_O

barlop

what?

open source doesn't necessarily mean any kind of movement

Transcript for